Use of Ustashe symbols prompts concern

July 3, 2007 9:00am

The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned Croatia State Television’s live broadcast of a rock concert that used Nazi imagery.As in practically all of Marko Perkovic’s concerts, this weekend’s performance by the Croatian rock singer used Nazi salutes, uniforms and symbols of Croatia’s Nazi puppet government during the World War II era, known as Ustashe. The concert was Perkovic’s biggest ever, according to reports, with 40,000 fans packed into a soccer stadium.Efraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Center’s Israel office, said before the concert that its screening in such an attractive time slot would “encourage Croatian extremist nationalists by giving official sanction to an event which constituted a brazen display of the symbols of Croatian racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.””A singer who sings nostalgically about Ustashe leader Ante Pavelic, and favorably about Croatia’s worst World War II concentration camps Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska, is openly urging his fans to identify with the genocidal Ustashe regime which sought to liquidate Croatia’s Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, as well as their Croatian political opponents,” Zuroff said.